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Eight students, three coaches and one goal for each individual. Each goal is special and specific to each student; some want better technique, some want to learn more rifle exercises and choreography on their left side, since they already know some on their right and others want to actually catch a flag properly instead of letting it hit the floor as they run in fear.

As a junior clarinetist from Germany, Klara Kumpfel is experiencing her first year of winter guard in America and hopes to bring it back with her to Germany. “My goal is to get to know the sport because we don’t have the sport and maybe you’re bringing some of the sport back to Germany, some of the skills and you can teach your friends,” said Kumpfel. She had first seen it during her first marching season in America as well and immediately fell in love with it.

“It looked interesting and I saw that during band and I have some very cool friends, awesome friends and that’s why I love them,” said Kumpfel. Klara had made some close friends in color guard and in her clarinet section, who are also participating in winter guard with her.

“They are all guard from fall and some band kids. My relationship is pretty good with everyone. I never had struggled to make friends and I like everyone in the guard because they’re awesome, always nice and friendly,” said Kumpfel. Like everyone, she has different parts of guard that she favors more than others

“My favorite part, I think, is the tosses and learning something new and I don’t know, I think learning from other people is cool,” said Kumpfel. Klara is also a part of A Band during basketball season but it can become very troubling when it comes to practicing her flag technique and clarinet playing.

“I first practice Winter Guard because I go outside and practice and I cannot do it if it’s dark but I can practice clarinet since this is inside and not stuck outside in the dark,” said Kumpfel.

Freshman Brady Steele also plays clarinet but became more infatuated with guard when he first learned about it when he started marching band in the summer “When I was in marching band, it was one of the main things that I liked more, besides the actual marching,” said Steele. The different flags seemed almost mesmerizing as they whipped through the fall air and he seemed distraught due to the decrease in guard members overtime.

“Just watching the different flags and also because I saw our guard diminish from ten down to eight and I kind of want to learn what it’s about so I can help recruit for next year,” said Steele. Due to the decrease in guard members and yearning to learn more Brady wants to focus his goal on the guard.

“My goal is to just learn more technique and then recruit more people so that we can raise our numbers for next year,” said Steele. Brady is also in A Band but practice for winter guard limit his time in the stands.

“Since practices are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the only A Band games that I can perform at are on Fridays, so that really takes it down from six games to three games,” said Steele.

Sophomore guard member Elyssa Herrera believes a smaller amount of people watching their performances brings more adrenaline rushes.

“I’ve done fall guard and winter guard for the past two years and one of my favorite things about it is performing for such a smaller amount of people than a bunch of people in the stadium, so it’s more exciting,” said Herrera. Elyssa performs on the weapon line, more specifically rifle line and bases her goal around that.

“My goal is to learn more rifle and all that stuff,” said Herrera. With the addition of new members such as Brady and Klara -both new at guard- Elyssa is hopeful that the diversity of winter guard will inspire other students to join.

“Right now we’ve started with a lot of new people so, I’m really hopeful we can build up and stuff. I don’t really know what it’s going to look like, but I’m pretty excited,” said Herrera.